Some aspects of the ‘Plan
for Assistance to a Free Cuba’By Dr. Ricardo
Alarcón de Quesada
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------[The complete text of the Commission's report may be
found:
http://www.state.gov/p/wha/rt/cuba/commission/2004/c12237.htm]
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On Oct.
12 2004, the international workshop on ‘Democracy and the Role of Local and
National Governments’ was held at Camilo Cienfuegos University in the city of
Matanzas, Cuba. That meeting was attended by, among others, numerous legislators
and academicians from the United States, Mexico and Spain. The president of the
National Assembly of the People's Power (Parliament) of Cuba, Dr. Ricardo
Alarcón, participated in the meeting and explained aspects of the ‘Plan for
Assistance to a Free Cuba’ designed by the administration of President George W.
Bush.

To speak of democracy here and now demands
above all to say something about the moment Cuba is going through. This time, I
shall leave aside the economic war that has been imposed upon us for 45 years
and the numerous aggressions, including terrorism, our people have suffered
during this long period. I shall limit my presentation to explain some
fundamental aspects of a document of more than 450 pages approved by the
government of the United States that was published last May 6 under the title "A
Plan for Assistance to a Free Cuba."

It is so aggressive and provocative that it
has been criticized even by individuals and institutions that are well known for
having devoted an important part of their lives to denigrating the Cuban
Revolution. One of them described the plan as "terrifying" and as "the most
explosive [development] in the relations between the United States and Latin
America in the past 50 years."

Let's see what that famous document contains,
and for this I shall cite their own words. >From the start, it announces that
its aim is "to bring the Cuban regime to a swift end" and specifies that "the
cornerstone of our policy to hasten an end to the Castro regime is to strengthen
policies of proactive support to the groups we back inside Cuba," and that --
for that purpose -- the current budget of $7 million will be raised to $59
million.

With those measures and the intensification of
the economic blockade and their aggressive actions they're confident that they
will defeat the Revolution and install here what they call a transition
government that would be directed by a U.S. functionary who would begin to work
starting now and whose job description is Transition Coordinator.

The nature of that transition and its content
are described in minute detail in the plan. The first step, which must be
concluded in less than one year, will be the return of properties -- homes,
land, etc. -- to their former owners, which they describe as "the Gordian knot"
of the transition. They do not fail to indicate, of course, the procedures to
carry out evictions and firings, dissolution of cooperatives and to demand huge
payments of back rent. The plan makes it clear who will look after this
troublesome matter: "The government of the United States will establish a
structure to direct the return of properties, the Commission on the Restitution
of Property Rights, to expedite the process."

The nation's economy, all its branches and all
social services -- among them public health and education -- will be privatized.
That enormous task also will be handled by Washington. The plan describes it
thus: "The government of the United States will establish a Standing Committee
of the United States for Economic Reconstruction."

It's a detailed plan. I shall barely touch on
the topic of social security. I shall read what the Empire tells our retirees:
"The Cuban economy and government budget after transition may not be able to
sustain the level of unearned benefits and the lax requirements for eligibility
that the communist system permitted." In other words, no more checkbooks, no
more pensions.

Don't be alarmed, though. Let's continue to
read the Yankee plan: "Create a Cuban Retiree Corps to give jobs to those
without resources, if they are in good health." And just so nothing is left out,
it makes it clear that that Corps would "develop a broad program of public works
on a major scale."

We know that it's impossible to strip the
people of everything, to wipe out all of their achievements, to impose upon them
such exploitation. It will simply never happen, because we'll make sure to
prevent it.

The writers of the plan point out modestly
that "it won't be easy" to carry this out. That's why they stress the following:
"As an immediate priority, the government of the United States will help
establish a truly professional civil police force and will offer assistance for
its technical training by the U.S. Department of State, which will bear the
responsibility for its total organization and direction."

Among the principal tasks of that repressive
organization, "totally organized and directed" by Washington, would be -- and I
quote again from the plan -- to "prosecute the former functionaries and members
of the government, the party, the security forces, the mass organizations and
other pro-government citizens, also many members of the Committees for the
Defense of the Revolution. The list could be long."

The American plan overlooks nothing; it covers
all aspects of life. It aims not only to dominate Cuba but also to place under
U.S. control the economy, the services, all social activities and, in fact, to
carry out the annexation of this country, under some local imaginary authorities
who would be totally submissive to a foreign power.

Cuba would lose every vestige of sovereignty
and independence. Cubans would be stripped not only of the achievements attained
through the Revolution but also the most basic attributes. Not only would they
lose forever their freedom and dignity and the right to health care, education,
culture, and social security, they would also lose their homes, their lands and
their jobs, and they would be obliged to work to pay an invented debt to the
former exploiters. In other words, a new and brutal servitude would be imposed
upon them. Cuba would cease to exist and Cubans would be turned into slaves.

That is why the National Assembly of the
People's Power called it by its real name: a plan to annihilate the Cuban
nation.

It is remarkable, therefore, that its writers
took the trouble to describe in detail the features of this future Cuba and also
that they devoted a full chapter to its alleged political structure. What for,
if Cuba would have disappeared by then? How to explain that apparent
contradiction?

The only possible explanation is that they
propose to annihilate Cuba and also to kill its example. They will make our
country disappear and eliminate even its memory from the minds of people. That's
why they devote so many pages to a massive exercise in deceit.

Evidently, they can't even attempt to confuse
the Cuban people. The message to them could not be clearer and more direct: to
wipe out all Cuban men and women, the present and future generations, to take
everything away from them, to reduce us to nothing.

Who could they confuse here? The farmers, who
once again would be evicted from their lands? The families, who would be evicted
from their homes? Some who would also have to pay, to the last penny, what
(according to Washington) they owe the former owners? The retirees, who would
lose their pensions and be forced to work until they die? A whole people who
would no longer have schools and hospitals and would never again receive, as a
sacred right, free medical care and education?

In Cuba, they can't deceive anyone. Here, the
unanimous response is a total, firm rejection, without any hesitation. Here,
they will find a people who will fight tooth and nail, will struggle to the last
man and woman, no matter their age, and they'll struggle to the end, but will
never return to slavery.

The fact that they're not even trying to
deceive the Cubans is made more obvious by the fact that, as part of the plan,
they included a set of measures that they're already implementing and all those
measures are defined by their hatred against our people. They punish in a cruel,
pitiless and illegal manner those who live in Cuba and the emigrants who live in
the United States.

Thousands of families here and there are under
absurd prohibitions that prevent them from visiting each other and make normal
communication impossible. They are prohibitions that are not applied to anyone
else, that violate the international standards of human rights and the United
States Constitution itself.

Those who act this way, do they really expect
to gain the sympathy of their victims? What this shows, beyond any doubt, is
that these people don't care what Cubans feel or suffer. Only irrational hatred,
without limit and control, can explain that behavior.

The purpose is to deceive others, and they lie
and falsify reality because they want to prevent at any cost other people from
seeking their liberation and struggling to achieve justice in the future. They
tremble at the thought that the Cuban project will haunt them like a ghost, even
after they manage to destroy it -- something they can never accomplish. That is
why the lies rise to a pitch of hallucination.

For example, when they talk about vaccinating
our children or combating illiteracy. These absolutely ridiculous proposals are
not the only amazing fantasies in this plan, which contains other, no less
surprising proposals. These two, however, have achieved notoriety because they
come from a country where more than 45 million people, among them many children,
lack health-care services, a country with a severe shortage of vaccines and
whose problems in the educational sector are notorious, including the urgent
need to impart literacy to many of its politicians.

Let us see, even if in passing, some of the
things they have the gall to mention in the chapter devoted to what they call
future democratic institutions in Cuba.

First of all -- and surely nobody should be
surprised -- the starting point is that the future structure of our country
would be dictated by Washington. Of course, they know how to do it; they have
experience and they say so with an honesty for which we're grateful. Let us
quote the words contained in Chapter Three of the plan: "The lessons learned in
Afghanistan and Iraq will serve as guidelines for any participation by the
United States in the process of constitutional reform in Cuba."

As a consequence of this, you would disappear.
Nothing would remain of the People's Power. Nothing would be left of the
beautiful, noble and creative project that was born here, precisely here, in
this land whose beauty draws nourishment both from nature and history. The
experience of Matanzas would be replaced by the sad and sordid experience they
would import from Afghanistan and Iraq. Can you imagine this, only for an
instant? Fallujah and Abu Ghraib, even for a moment, a single second?

Matanceros, forget Matanzas. Mr. Bush, the
almighty, the all-knowing, he who can do anything he pleases has a plan, and he
tells us that he's going to impose it upon us by blood and fire.

Forget the idea that everyone can vote, even
if he's black, even if he's a humble laborer. Forget the idea that anyone can
put forward someone else's candidacy, even if one or the other is black or a
humble laborer. And the fact that the people elected live just like those who
elected them and in addition report to them on their activities. And the fact
that no one lives at someone else's expense and no one receives prebends or
privileges.

Mr. Bush has other ideas. He has a plan, his
plan, no more, no less. Let's continue to review it, to see what else it
foretells.

Voters would no longer have the power to
submit candidates directly. That would be the task of the electoral parties,
that is, the machines (controlled by money) that in the so-called
"representative democracies" replace the popular will.

But they're not talking about just any kind of
party. The plan makes it clear that they would be the same groups that
Washington has been manufacturing and financing since 1959 through the CIA and
the Cuba Program. According to the plan, "the Cuba Program would be greatly
expanded to directly support the creation and development of political parties
and interest groups."

The mercenary groups invented by the CIA would
mutate into the parties of the future, which would continue to be paid and
directed by the CIA, because "the government of the United States," and I quote
again from the plan, "would carry out specific programs at national, provincial
and municipal levels to create and organize grassroots political parties."

Voters could no longer nominate and select
candidates all by themselves. The organizations that represent the whole of the
population couldn't do it for the nation and the provinces, either. Candidates
could not be nominated by municipal assemblies composed entirely of citizens
who, as we all know, were submitted and elected directly by the voters
themselves. All this would be handled by the parties that, as we saw, would be
manufactured, directed and paid by the government of the United States.

It goes without saying that the plan totally
eliminates the obligation of the delegates and deputies to render accounts --
periodically and regularly -- to those who elected them. It also eliminates the
principle of revocation and all forms and manners of popular participation and
linkage between the population and their representatives. All that would
disappear.

Since the government in Washington would
choose the candidates, direct them and pay them, that foreign government would
control the whole process and totally usurp popular sovereignty. I must say that
this aspect reveals, in a particularly stark manner, the annexationist and
colonialist nature of the plan. Not in the United States, not even in Puerto
Rico does the federal government interfere to such an extent with local
elections.

Cubans would no longer have the right to vote.
Whereas the plan is ridiculous when it discloses plans for the vaccination of
children and literacy projects, in this context the plan is pathetic. Cubans
would simply lose their natural right to become voters automatically, upon
reaching the established age. Automatic, universal and free voter registration
in a public and accessible electoral register would no longer exist. According
to the plan, which I again quote from, "it may be necessary to compile an
entirely new voter list," and this would be done, listen to this carefully, "as
is done in the United States."

At this point we arrive to a bit of cynicism
that is frankly grotesque, when the plan defines the U.S. system as "voluntary
self-enrollment." What does this strange little phrase conceal? Is it that any
North American becomes a voter simply by wishing to become one and writing his
name on the voter list?

The reality is exactly the opposite. The
electoral history of that country is, to a great degree, an uninterrupted series
of battles that millions of North Americans have had to fight -- and still must
fight -- to earn the right to register and, after they do, to be allowed to
vote, and finally -- as if the previous steps were not enough -- to have their
votes counted, a dream come true.

In the United States, federal, state and local
authorities are not required to guarantee, or even facilitate a citizen's
inscription on the voting register. This country, which spends hundreds of
millions of dollars in electoral propaganda and disburses lavish amounts of
public money to the campaigns of Republicans and Democrats -- two deceitful
faces of a single and solitary electoral apparatus -- does not have the
mechanisms needed to facilitate an electoral franchise.

Registration is simply not something that
interests the authorities. Let the citizens register, if they can overcome the
various restrictions and regulations established by the authorities, who do
endeavor to impose restrictions and regulations that make it difficult for
citizens to register. Some writers have pointed out that the United States is
the only developed country that does nothing to enable citizens to register.

It does a lot, however, to deprive them of
their franchise and exclude them from voter lists. The whole world recalls the
shameful elections of the year 2000 and many people are saying they fear the
situation will be repeated next month.

Various organizations that defend civil
rights, along with representatives of the African-American population, have
ceaselessly denounced the threats that hang over their heads. Tens of thousands
of blacks are removed from the voting register in Florida without an opportunity
to appeal that arbitrary manipulation of alleged criminal records. Just to give
you an idea of the racism that exists there: according to the press, that
situation affects 22,000 blacks, about 60 Latinos and not a single white person.

The use of different voting mechanisms,
including voting machines of questionable efficacy or machines that make a
recount impossible, join other tricks -- the most notorious of which is the
media's excessive coverage of a contest between demagoguery and banality.

At this moment, numerous institutions of all
kinds. among them outstanding personalities of the world of art and culture, are
conducting an intense campaign throughout the country to try to register people
to vote and give them the information and means they need to do so.

Why should they devote their time and
resources to that task? Do we need greater proof that to a substantial sector of
the U.S. population -- to millions of people -- becoming registered voters is
almost the equivalent of accomplishing a prowess?

Those who attempt to impose upon others the
North American electoral model have an insurmountable problem in their hands.
The majority of the people do not believe in such a model. On top of all that,
not even 50 percent of those who enjoy the difficult privilege of being listed
on the voting register bother to vote. And the number of those who appear as
voters is inflated by fraud, by tricks that allow some to vote several times --
among them, many visitors from beyond the grave.

To ensure the complete reconversion of
[Cuba's] electoral system, the U.S. government would dictate laws and
regulations, appoint advisers and train functionaries and employees at all
levels. And remember that any protest would be crushed by the new police, a
force that would be under the full direction and control of the State
Department.

Before closing, let me return to the National
Assembly's Declaration on July 1: "For certain, it will be impossible for them
to turn their sinister plans into reality. First, they would have to invade this
country, occupy it militarily and later crush the resistance of our people, and
that they will never accomplish.

"We are ready and willing and fight to the
last man or woman to prevent this. If they attack us, they will find here a
united and educated people, the owners of a glorious history of heroism,
struggles and sacrifices in the quest of freedom, who will never renounce their
independence or their ideals of justice and solidarity; who will never renounce
the beautiful, noble and profoundly human work they managed to accomplish
despite the aggressions of the Empire. If they attack us, they will suffer here
their worst and most shameful defeat."

Let the Empire make no mistake. We say so from
this city whose name is a reminder of five centuries of resistance, from this
province that was founded on a rebellion against slavery, from this land that
never again will be vilified and humiliated. All of us Cubans will fight to the
end for this land: the Cubans of today, of tomorrow, and also our parents and
our grandparents.

Because "our dead, arms upraised, still will
defend it," we shall fight on to victory -- always.